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Mentoring at work is one of the best transformative tools available to employers. Over 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies use it to help their employees stay on top of their game. It can create better leaders for your organization, increase engagement levels in all your employees, and even build a more inclusive workplace.
We understand that starting a mentoring program can feel daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. We’ve put together this mentoring toolkit because, at Together, we believe mentorships change lives and make businesses better. We’re dedicated to helping organizations build phenomenal mentoring programs to take their dreams to the next level.
What is in this mentoring toolkit?
A mentoring toolkit will empower your employees to get the most from their mentoring experience. It’s a little something extra that you can draw on to push your workplace mentoring program further.
Our mentoring toolkit can help get your mentoring program off the ground and keep it running smoothly.
- We offer you tips for launching a mentoring program,
- guidance for registration questionnaires, and
- tools for pairing mentors and mentees for a successful match.
We also explain how to sell your mentoring program and get buy-in from employees and company leadership.
Top 10 tips to launch a successful mentoring program
Together has helped leading global organizations launch mentorship programs with our mentoring software. We’ve seen what successful programs have in common. Here are the 10 tips things we’ve learned when it comes to building an effective mentoring program.
1. Determine if you need a mentoring platform
It can take extra time and effort to launch a mentoring program in your organization. Using a mentoring platform simplifies the steps you need to take to get your program up and running.
It can be a central hub for your participants and program manager, reducing the time and effort to get the most from your program.
2. Know what the goals are for the program
Before starting a mentoring program in your organization, it’s vital to know your goals for the program. There are many different ways that mentoring can better your business. It’s best if your mentoring program goals line up with business objectives, such as:
- Attracting top talent
- Creating a more diverse workplace
- Improving engagement
- Developing high potential employees
- Preparing new managers for their roles
- Onboarding new hires
- Connecting remote employees
- Cultivating a culture of well-being
3. Ensure you are pairing mentees with relevant mentors
Getting to know someone new can be awkward at first. Pairing mentees with relevant mentors will ensure that they get something positive out of the experience.
To get an excellent mentor-mentee match, look for participants who are both engaged and committed to the process. Pair together mentors and mentees who share similar values, priorities, hobbies, and interests. This can help build trust and connection.
4. Choose your mentors wisely
Consider the quality of your mentors and what they have to offer mentees. You may also want to have a training program for mentors.
Our 2022 State of Coaching and Mentoring report showed that 48 percent of HR professionals provide training to their internal mentors. Only 39 percent say that over half of their mentors are effective and impactful, and just 20 percent say that more than three-quarters are.
For that reason, the success of your mentoring program depends on the quality of your mentors. Here’s a guide to the qualities to look for in potential mentors.
5. Promote your program through multiple channels
Attracting participants can be a challenge. You’ll need to promote your program in different ways. A single email blast doesn’t suffice.
The best programs generate momentum by getting executives to talk about it, managers to share it with their subordinates, and announce it in company meetings.
When promoting your program, use all the company channels you have to reach potential participants.
6. Provide content and resources for mentors and mentees
Support and resources are key to taking your mentoring program to the next level. You can help your mentors and mentees make the most of their experience by providing agendas, questions, articles, videos, and survey questions.
7. Ensure that mentors and mentees meet at least once a month
Relationship is the focus of every mentorship.
To help the connection between your mentor and mentee grow, they need to be meeting together on a regular cadence.
These sessions are crucial to the mentee’s development and growth. With Together’s platform, for example, you’ll be able to easily monitor how often mentors and mentees are meeting.
Meeting frequency can also be a key indicator that something about the mentorship needs to be adjusted.
8. Aim for 10-15 percent of your organization to participate
It’s best to start small when you’re just getting your mentoring program off the ground. Ideally, a pilot mentoring program should have 10 or 15 percent of employees involved. This can help you iron out any problems with the program before you scale it.
9. Check-in with mentors and mentees frequently
Follow up regularly with participants to gauge how they are doing in their mentorships. Doing this can help alert you to problems with a pairing and remedy it quickly.
10. Measure the results and outcomes of the program
Tracking and reporting on your workplace mentoring program are essential to know whether it is successful or not.
Consider the goals you outlined for your mentoring program and the KPIs to measure it.
You should aim to have reports after each program that includes participant feedback and the business goals reached.
Registration questionnaire toolkit
Getting the right mentor-mentee match depends on asking the right registration questions. You want to understand participant expectations so you can pair them with other participants who are looking for the same things.
Mentorships can suffer if there are unmet expectations from participants. And that can impair the effectiveness of your mentoring program.
A toolkit for matching mentors and mentees
Making the best match is critical to the success of your mentoring program. When you can guarantee a great match for your employees, more people will want to be a part of that experience. That, in turn, will produce good results for your organization. Pairing mentors and mentees can feel like one of the most challenging aspects of a mentoring program. But it doesn’t have to be.
If you have a smaller mentoring program with less than 50 employees involved, then manually matching can work okay. But when you want to scale or if you want to get the best matches quickly, you’ll struggle. One of the drawbacks of manually matching mentoring program participants can be time-consuming. You need to sort through the registration papers and determine what each employee wants to gain through mentorship.
Mentoring software like Together can take the effort and struggle from the matching process. Our algorithm can be adjusted so you can find the right matches for your program goals. You’ll also save time as our program can determine a great match in just minutes.
Tips for getting buy-in for your mentoring program
Having leadership support for your mentoring program is more than a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. But it can be a challenge to convince your executives that mentoring is essential for your business.
In our 2022 State of Coaching and Mentoring report, a lack of budget for a mentoring program was cited as one of the most significant barriers for organizations.
You can overcome leadership reluctance for your program by making a compelling business case for mentoring.
Inform your company’s top level about the benefits that mentoring programs bring to organizations. These include:
- Reducing turnover,
- Increasing engagement, and
- Boosting productivity and revenue.
Building a world-class mentoring program
Workplace mentoring programs hold so many benefits for your employees, and they can also improve productivity and increase revenue for your organization. Whether you want to onboard new hires, connect with remote employees, or reduce turnover for your company, mentoring has proven to be an effective tool.
However, it’s best to begin with a mentoring toolkit. And if you want to do it well, Together’s mentoring platform simplifies the process of starting and managing a workplace mentoring program. Our mentoring software
- Makes matching easier and scalable
- Improves the registration process
- Tracks vital metrics
Find out how Together’s platform works with a free demo.
